Pigs at the Trough

Pigs at the Trough by Arianna Huffington

If you have some doubt as to whether and to what extent American corporate management has set new standards for heartless greed and destruction, or whether and to what extent Congress and the federal agencies meant to regulate these corporations are instead working on their behalf to transfer money, power, and protections from the people to the CEOs, this book may change your way of thinking.

If you already think the pigs are pigs and the feds are a trough, and you don’t want to wallow in it, you won’t get as much out of this book.

There’s no argument for a new way of thinking here. It’s just a chronicling of facts, albeit with colorful metaphors sprinkled in. So, it’s not really a page-turner, but it is a fine work of reporting on a topic that is extremely hard to communicate. Huffington does as good a job as anyone of describing the mammoth gap between the unimaginably large sums of money stolen by corporate crooks and the petty sorts of crimes that our law enforcement personnel love to prosecute.

Huffington names names, good and bad. But she writes, rightly, that what’s needed is a popular revolt, not a single knight in shining armor. The one objection I have in this regard, is that she suggests writing your Congress Members to tell them not to pay attention to letter-writing campaigns, because they may have been solicited by lobbying firms. Yes, it’s good to be aware that lobbying firms are buying misleading ads that urge people to write to Congress on some issue. But if people fall for such a ploy, they are still people. In the end, urging Congress to pay more attention to letters (and less to dollars) will have a democratic result. Huffington should be telling people to write, fax, Email, phone, and visit.